Today we observe the Lord’s Ascension. Traditionally, and still for most Catholics throughout the world, Ascension is observed forty days after Easter. This means that it is ordinarily celebrated on Thursday during the Sixth Week of Easter. Because it comes directly from the scriptures, this liturgical arithmetic is important.
Forty has a particular significance in Sacred Scripture. For example, after being liberated from Egypt, the Israelites spent forty years in the desert before crossing the Jordan and entering the Promised Land. In a kind of recapitulation, Jesus spent forty days and nights fasting, praying, and being tempted by the devil in the desert before being baptized by John in the same Jordan River. His baptism was the start of his public ministry. In our first reading, the inspired author (who also wrote Luke’s Gospel) asserts that for forty days after he was resurrected, Jesus continued to appear to the apostles.
During those forty days, we learn, Jesus spoke to the apostles “about the kingdom of God.”1 The risen Lord’s teaching during this time is sometimes called “The Gospel of the Forty Days.” What is truly astounding is that, despite being instructed in person by their resurrected Master, the apostles still didn’t understand the kingdom of God. Proof of this is their question to him: “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”2
Notice that while he instructed them about “the kingdom of God,” they asked him when he was going to restore the “kingdom to Israel.” What they failed to grasp is that these are two different things. One, the kingdom of Israel, is a political entity. The other, the kingdom of God, is not. I think this is instructive for those today who lament the loss of Christendom. Christendom and Christianity differ in the same way as the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of God differ.
Theologically, it is important to grasp that Jesus did not ascend in order to distance himself from us. On the contrary, he ascended so he can be closer to us than if he had remained. So, it is significant when, in our reading from Acts, Jesus promises his apostles that “in a few days you will be baptized with the holy Spirit.”3
Believe it or not, next Sunday will be fifty days since Easter Sunday. On that day we’ll celebrate Pentecost. Pentecost, which is the most important celebration of liturgical year after Easter, marks the beginning of the Church. The foundation of the Church, the Body of Christ, is part of the resurrection event. It was on the first Christian Pentecost, in fulfillment of the Lord’s promise, that the apostles, Mary, and other disciples were “baptized with the Holy Spirit.”4
Why do I say, “first Christian Pentecost”? I say that because Pentecost, which is Greek for “fifty days,” was how the word used by Greek-speaking Jews to refer to their feast of Shavuot. Shavuot, or Pentecost, is fifty days after Passover. It is on Shavuot that observant Jews commemorate God giving the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai.
It is also important to understand theologically that the Holy Spirit is the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence between his ascension and his return. And so, it is through the Holy Spirit that Christ remains present among us, in us, and through us. The Holy Spirit is the mode, the way, the means through which Christ becomes closer to us than if he had remained. This is made very concrete when you think about receiving holy communion.
The Ascension, by Benjamin West, 1801
In our celebration of the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit does not only transform the bread and the wine. Through our communion with the body and blood of Christ, the Holy Spirit transforms us into Christ’s Body. In turn, filled with the Holy Spirit, we are sent to extend Christ’s resurrected presence to wherever we are. This is really what it means to be a Christian. This is why participating in the Eucharist, especially the Sunday Eucharist, is so vitally important, not only for us but for the redemption of the world.
These days it seems we experience weekly, if not daily, a deluge of bad news. These past few weeks our nation has been traumatized again by mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas. These and other events reveal how badly the world needs to be redeemed. How badly everyone needs genuine hope. As Christians, we are called to be agents of the hope God gives us through Christ by the power of their Holy Spirit.
For those who pray the Blessed Virgin’s Rosary regularly, you know that Jesus’ ascension is the second Glorious Mystery. You also know that the fruit of this mystery is hope. At least in Christian terms, hope is not mere wishing. Rather hope arises through experience.
Experiencing our mortality, our finitude, prompts the question: Is this all there is? Genuine hope can only be seen through the lens of the Paschal Mystery of Christ. In short, the Paschal Mystery is: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Saint Paul, I think, explains well the point I am trying to make:
we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us5This is also highlighted when one of the men in white asks those who were witnessing Jesus ascending why they were just standing there looking up. By then pointing out that Christ will come again, he seeks to draw their attention to the time between now and his return. The question is clear: How are we to live in this mean-time?
Our faith requires us to hold things in tension: three and one, human and divine, virgin and mother, etc. While, as the liturgy puts it, we “await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ,” we must recognize that he is with us and has never abandoned us.6 Not only that, but that he seeks to dwell in us so he can act through us. Because of this, God’s kingdom, while not yet fully established, is never absent.
As Christians, we are to live God’s kingdom as a present reality, not as a dream deferred. This is the difference between hoping and wishing. It is how we “hold unwaveringly to our confession that gives us hope.”7 Passively awaiting the arrival of God’s kingdom is the result of failing to recognize it has already been inaugurated, is now present, and, by virtue of your baptism, elicits your participation. To think God’s kingdom will take the form of a restored Christendom is, like the apostles at the Ascension, to miss the point and maybe to ultimately miss the boat.
1 Acts 1:3.↩
2 Acts 1:6.↩
3 Acts 1:5.↩
4 See Acts 2:1-13.↩
5 Romans 5:3-5.↩
6 Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, Communion Rite, sec. 125.↩
7 Hebrews 10:23.↩
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